Reclamation
by aqua-blurr
Summary: AO, post-Lost, femslash. Alex Cabot had been on hold long enough: a New Yorker without New York, ambition suppressed by the demands of obscurity. She would make them all--the city, the career, and even the woman--hers again.
1. Default Chapter

The walls of the county-owned building were thick-ten, twelve inches of concrete block and stucco encasing her. She stared through the bars at a wide-open, sunny sky. It stretched outside the glass in all directions like the promise of safe flight and easy breathing. She turned her eyes to the layers of institutional gray paint and attempted an easy breath, but it came out hard. Before being sentenced to this singular hellhole, she'd never seen sky like that: flat and unnervingly blue. Everywhere. It hung over her head, never more than two stories above street level.

Like many prisoners, she marked time served against a sentence with no release date, no parole hearing. She fell into the routine easily enough, up at six, shower, work, to bed at ten. They advised her not to wait. _Build a new life for yourself_, they said. _You may not be able to go back to your old one_. But she liked the life she'd had. It was almost exactly what she wanted. Although her modest trust fund had been depleted by law school, she'd managed to buy and furnish a beautiful apartment, a safe and warm crag in the harsh rocks of the city. She held the same arrogant belief that New York was the center of civilization, the only city worth living in, that all New Yorkers shared. And it was her city. Maybe the longed-for promotion to Major Cases hadn't come when she expected, but it had certainly been on its way. She resented trading away her ambition and achievement for another breath.

_Build a new life for yourself_. She dismissed this idea out of hand. How could she build a new life here, the middle of a picturesque nowhere, at a steady but menial job, with people too polite to trust? No, she'd thought, I'll wait. And her resolve never wavered but once. In the local library on another sunny Saturday, she saw a lean, athletic woman with short dark hair. Alex pulled a book from a shelf, holding it mid-air. The woman met her gaze and smiled, and her resolution waffled.

Alex refused to think of her as a substitute. You substitute ingredients for a meal you intend to finish, and Alex wasn't ready to finish this. You substitute one ingredient for an ingredient you're missing, and Alex wasn't willing to admit that she missed Olivia. Alex had broken it off with her weeks before the Sandoval case. Still, Alex found doing time was easier if she were also doing a librarian.

Standing at her desk in the gray county building, Alex put the phone back to her ear. "What? Could you repeat that?"

"It's safe. You can go back to New York now. If you still want to."

XXXX

She took off Sonia's white cross-trainers and socks and tucked them under the bed. The pink t-shirt, which Alex despised almost as much as she now despised Sonia herself, and the blue jeans were removed, folded neatly and tossed in a corner. Forty-six hours elapsed from phone call to flight, and Alex felt both rushed and impatient as she began dressing herself. The checked-off bullet items of her action plan flashed efficiently across her reflection in the mirror.

Hose, slip, camisole: despite the buffet restaurants she'd been subjected to, Alex managed not to get fat. In a day and a half, she called her mother, scheduled a meeting with Donnelly, left a message for Olivia, quit her job, gave notice on the apartment, and managed to find a decent suit.

Blouse, skirt, blazer: these are the clothes she should have always worn. She had reserved a flight to New York under the name Alex Cabot. Her landlord could sell her furniture and keep her deposit. She didn't need her mail forwarded, and the librarian knew what to expect. Earrings, necklace, watch: the mirror reflected the image of a finished woman. She appraised her hair and makeup one last time and dropped the brush in the trashcan.

Alex left the unlocked apartment with Sonia's cell phone, driver's license and directions to the FBI's regional office tucked in an otherwise empty purse. Several hours later she sat in a parking lot next to a gray federal building, turning her old life over and over in her hands: driver's license, passport, and other cards. Black letters recounted her previous identity. She stared at them until meaning was absorbed and hit bone. _I was not born in Pensacola. I am not thirty-three, nor do I live on Donovan Drive. My name is Alexandra Cabot._ RIP, Sonia.

She was done with it. Done with the outlet malls, the chain restaurants, and the provincial mediocrity of this so-called city. She put Sonia's license in the glove box and headed for the airport. At LAX, Alex parked the car in a zone that would ensure its being towed away at Sonia's expense and grabbed her flight to freedom. Alex Cabot had been on hold long enough: a New Yorker without New York, ambition suppressed by the demands of obscurity. She would make them all-the city, the career, and even the woman-hers again. 


	2. Part 2

The wine was decanted and dinner would be ready soon. Olivia set a small gift box on the coffee table and sat cross-legged on the floor in front of a gnarl of cord. After a moment, she found the plug end and began untangling a string of colored lights that was just long enough to decorate her potted ficus and loop around one window. Ho, ho, ho. Olivia knew should try to be cheerier for the woman she hoped could chase away the ghosts of Christmas past. She pulled her eyes from the red LED light and focused again on the spaghetti of cord in her hands. She followed the line physically and mentally as it looped in circles and twisted against itself to one end.

Regardless of the relationship Alex and Olivia had negotiated several years ago, they were never a couple. If one woman had in an urgent moment whispered, "Take me," and been taken, she never affirmed possession afterward with an "I'm yours." They were careful with each other: there had been many nights of taking and many days of not having. They'd given what they could afford and held firm when the cost seemed too dear. When Alex broke the relationship off, they didn't tie up loose ends. They let whatever pattern of cloth they wove together fray at the edges, thin threads of affection and attachment detaching into the day's search warrants and trial prep. Then she died, was resurrected, and left. Just like that.

_Fuck this mess_, Olivia thought without regard to which mess she was referring. She stood and stretched, not turning to the darkly lit '1' on her answering machine. It was 7:30, the oven timer had gone off, and no one was at her door yet. Olivia cursed herself as she pushed the button again.

"Liv, it's me. I left a message for you at work. Listen, I can come home now. I'll be there by Christmas day."

Alex then rattled off the digits to a phone number Olivia didn't call. _I can go home now._ Olivia stood with her finger over the button. She pressed it one more time, hoping repetition would bring clarity. "...left a message for you at work. Listen, I can go..." Frustrated, Olivia moved into the kitchen before the word was replayed, but she heard it again in her head. _...home..._

Naturally, the squad room had been buzzing that morning with gossip of Alex's return. Like a blind person whose hearing grows sensitive to nuances of sound, the men she worked with, unable to articulate even rudimentary descriptions of their own feelings, could ramble on in detail about the psychological states and motivations of their co-workers. They'd speculated about where she'd been, who she'd become, and whom she was with now. Three blind mice.

"Maybe she's doing Legal Aid somewhere. Like in Texas for immigrant farm workers. I could see that," Fin threw out.

"No way. First, immigration is federal, and everyone knows that besides coming under the ever-expanding auspices of the Department of Homeland Security, USICE is infested with cartel moles protecting their interests. The feds wouldn't place her in a job where she'd come into contact with them."

"If the feds know about these moles, then why don't they bust 'em?"

Munch glanced incredulously at Fin before easing his reply across the desk, "Because they're using them for counter-intelligence, of course. I'll tell you where she is. Iowa, " he said with a pen tap to his desk. "Or Wyoming. Probably doing some mind-numbing, mundane, _non-legal_ work, like insurance adjuster or meter maid."

"Man, that's bullshit. I bet Wyoming doesn't even have metered parking."

From behind his desk, Elliot chuckled. The partners looked over to him, and Munch pulled his glasses down his nose, "Well, maybe _some_ of us have a better idea about where the ADA has been. You know, inside information we mere peons aren't privy to." Elliot winced and started to respond.

"We haven't seen or heard from her-or about her-since she left, guys." Olivia stood abruptly and grabbed her jacket. "C'mon, we better get to Johnson's apartment building." Olivia wanted to explain, but they knew why she and Elliot hadn't said anything. She wanted to apologize, but she'd done no wrong in protecting a colleague. "All we know is she's coming home." All we know, but what did she know?

She was coming home. _Home for Christmas._ That was nice, right? To have loved ones home on Christmas Day? Olivia drove across town mechanically, weighing the implications of the word through each turn of the sedan. They felt heavier than they should. Why did she use the word 'home'? Was Manhattan home to her? Alex had once referred to Olivia's apartment as home by accident, and she laughed and quickly corrected herself.

_There's no place like home._ Olivia listened to Elliot's voice as he explained that for the first time in over two decades his children would be visiting his home on Christmas morning instead of waking up in it. He didn't sound happy. She pulled in front of the building and set the parking brake. Maybe it was easier for the returning loved one than the one who had remained at home. _Where the heart is._ She stepped out of the car not knowing exactly where her heart was.

The cord was untangled but her thoughts weren't when the door buzzed, breaking through her recollections of the day. Olivia pressed the Erase button on her machine, and she welcomed her dinner date.


End file.
